A Newspaper For Kedington

It gives me great pleasure to welcome readers to Kedington's online newspaper and welcome you to the editorial section. I'm a strong believer that factual reporting and opinion should be kept separate as much as possible (although I will be the first to admit that possibility is not always there) hence a separate clearly marked editorial section for pieces where opinion is a strong contributing factor.

This piece is just to say hello and explain why I've set up this enterprise. Many of you probably know I spend a lot time helping out my parents at the newsagents. I live above the shop and I get to see every front page every morning. You might think this would be enough to make most people want to have nothing to do with journalism but of course I also deal with the supposedly local newspapers the Haverhill Weekly News and the Haverhill Echo. In the last year both of these have moved editors out of Haverhill to Cambridge and Bury respectively. The Haverhill weekly has seemingly given up on Kedington entirely and recently even went as far as to describe a factory as being "In a town on the Suffolk-Cambridgeshire border" and only later went on to mention that it was in Haverhill, so doesn't seem to be doing too well for the town either. The Echo has seemingly fallen less far but is still aimed (understandably) at the folks of Haverhill and carries very little of the goings on in Kedington. It could even on this basis be argued that a paper for Kedington has always been a good idea in principle. Indeed I would not say we are the first. The Ketton Review has acted brilliantly as a quarterly paper for many years and will continue to do so I suspect as long as there is a village in need of it, given as it does a round up of all that has gone by in the previous four months and events to come, but the Internet has come along and allowed a new style of newspaper. Not suffering the cost of paper and ink or delivery we can update when things happen and if an event changes it's date like the village meeting to discuss the Local Development Framework we can update quickly to cover it (even a weekly couldn't keep up with that one).

In short the Internet has made this production possible and with many stories on the radio and TV about newspapers bailing out to the web I thought it would be a good idea to stake out Kedington's little bit of cyberspace before some big firm decides to try and do one by phone from Bury or Cambridge or London or some such.

Plans for the future.

These first few weeks have been an education. I knew a lot went on in Kedington, but truly I never realised just how much until I tried to document it. It's going to take me at least a month to really catch up with the day to day as I try to get all the up coming events on the site (Thanks to those of you who have started sending in you're events by email) whilst covering all the news stories that have been coming up in the last few weeks like the Road works, the LDF and horticultural show. As you may notice we have a sports section too and having been in touch with the Barnardiston Arms (Seemingly a hub for sport in the area) we will be having all the results of Kedington's various teams up online soon. Of course if your team is representing Kedington on the field of battle some where let us know.

Also coming soon we will be opening up our section dedicated to putting the details of all the village organisations and services online so if you fancy taking part you know where to look. Also we have a classified section just waiting in the wings ready to serve you whether you are buying, selling or just offering.

With so much going on how can you hope to keep up with it all? Well, checking back every day would be one possibility but I know for many such old fashioned ways are a thing of the past, for such web savvy people you could do worse than add me on Facebook. If you add Matthew Upton (you can recognise me by the Kedington Sign) you will get just Kedington news updates and non of my personal stuff about which I imagen you are totally uninterested and which I keep elsewhere.

In short the future here at Kedington News is going to be busy so I'm going to have a cup of tea, stick another album on the record player and get on with it.

Article by M P Upton
The editorial section is an opinion piece based in part on the opinions of the editor. If you have an opinion you wish to raise or further information on a subject covered please contact Editor@KedingtonNews.co.uk